Without a handle on strategy and design, you're just moving faster in the wrong direction
Most product teams don't have a strategy problem. They have a committee problem. Decisions get made in rooms full of smart people with strong opinions and no shared evidence. Just the act of making something takes forever — and when something finally ships, it's a compromise that satisfies the room but misses the customer altogether.
AI — on top of distributed teams and shrinking headcount — is making this worse, not better. It's never been easier to generate, prototype, and ship. But speed without signal just means you'll get to wrong faster.
If strategy is intentionality and design is how it becomes real, most teams are skipping both right now.
Let's figure out what's actually slowing you down. Book a 25-min consult.
Select case studies
Healthcare two-sided marketplace
As Sesame's founding designer, built a transparent two-sided healthcare marketplace for Americans and patients bypassing insurance. Using guerrilla interviews for rapid validation, we simplified complex provider-patient matching as "Hotel Tonight for doctors," launching from zero to 500+ providers in four (4) months. Built scalable Figma-Storybook design system to support continued growth.
Regional utility company
Transformed how an energy utility communicates innovation value internally. Using foundational research and sprints — including the Design Sprint — we developed the Customer Energy Control Center (CECC) prototype and organizational dashboards that elevated a 70+ project R&D lab from operational invisibility to strategic recognition within the broader company.
Fractional design for a travel startup
Led strategic pivot from SMB to enterprise after discovering that enterprise orgs — not smaller teams — had the compliance liability that made Shep a must-have. Our Chrome browser extension addressed duty of care gaps during business travel, surviving a global pandemic that wiped out 92% of the market, and ultimately leading to acquisition by Flight Centre.
Fortune 100 dental insurance provider
Designed preventive care engagement for millions of members by combining IoT smart toothbrush data with behavioral rewards. Using the Clear Path Forward sequence, we created a proof of concept that shifted the business model from reactive customer issues to proactive health outcomes, delivering strategic roadmap for member engagement and retention.
Unified customer interaction platform
Unified fragmented experiences across Bank of America's 10+ business lines affecting thousands of client touchpoints. Through 20+ stakeholder interviews and 12+ validation sessions, created a 360° customer view platform enabling relationship managers to deliver personalized service while reducing operational friction.
While each project in our portfolio represents a unique success story, some have disclosure and privacy constraints. Schedule a 1:1 conversation to learn about specific outcomes and methods that might resonate with your goals.
Here's what working together looks like
Some teams need us to lead the whole thing — the research, the facilitation, the artifacts. Others want a thinking partner while their team does the making. And some already have a designer or agency in place and just need sharper judgment at the wheel.
We've worked all three (3) ways, sometimes in the same engagement. What stays consistent is the approach: we don't make things until we understand what's worth making, and we don't hand over a deliverable without making sure your team knows what to do with it.
The work usually lives somewhere across customer discovery and sprint facilitation, product strategy and positioning, design and prototyping, and team coaching. Often it's more than one.
READY TO WORK TOGETHER?
See if our approach fits your needs
Book a 25-min call to talk through your situation. We'll be straight about whether our approach makes sense — and what working together might look like (if we work in tandem).
Phone: +1 917-720-6388
Email: heythere@howthisworks.co
How This Works show, our podcast
Subscribe to our newsletter, How Might We...
Not spammy or salesy, just ideas worth your time — written and assembled weekly-ish
© 2017-2026 How This Works, Inc. All rights reserved.
